WHY HAS IT TAKEN ME SO LONG TO SPEAK
Well, I am still riding the initial wave of incredulity,
a sense of the impossibility of large masses of ku klux
fucking klan and nazis proudly defiantly marching,
and a President kissing their asses because
they’re his base.
It’s just something that can’t be the case.
And then you have the dialogue about ‘both sides’ being violent
when the only thing that makes sense is, as in world war two
for instance, you go to war with it. But there it is,
advocating self-defense equals advocating violence?
It’s a tight call. I wouldn’t want to do 25 to life
on account of these ignorant maggots.
It’s too much for civilians to undertake of course,
literally killing nazis and kkk.
It’s the public’s responsibility to make it clear it’s unacceptable
to hate on and terrify billions of other people.
It’s the government’s responsibility to deal with such sick menace.
KKK and Nazis espouse criminal intent, arm themselves,
and set forth on the night.
Who else is allowed to do this?
No one.
The other tall hurdle to discussing it is the whole business is so offensive
to so many people, you just cringe. As if there’s something you can say
to account for that. Ripping open old wounds really doesn’t help anyone.
But as to whether there’s been progress, the progress is massive.
The extra decade the older saw don’t easily translate
to the mixed medley of cultural developments by the end of the 80s.
The main stream today that is outraged and appalled and sternly reacting,
from CEOs to gentrifiers to Walmart workers and angered children,
as of the 70s would have been living in homogenized communities
with families divided and fighting about the issue,
if there were any anti-racists present at all.
The way it worked was the nicer people would not be engaging in any of it
but right out in the mainstream, behaving as if everyone agreed,
would be directly racist talk, often baffling:
Ontarians with French last names caustically anti-french,
*I had previously lived in Quebec, and found this one very strange;
people with a native ancestor who talked about “indians”
with cruel nastiness. Little tyrants that would
always have a clique and go around bullying people
and making it an issue if you didn’t say hateful things,
“like you were judging them”
Goaders toward racism just about anywhere you might go,
likewise anti-gay and violently hating on myriad categories of people
while a choir of virulent mysogenists chimed away.
At any level of the society. The rich are the most racist
or the working class is the most racist?
Getting it to be not like that has been truly worth it.
It was dense and more comprehensive than imaginable.
If you befriended somebody on their target list, or were simply nice to them,
or polite to them, you were flagged for a problem.
Amateur gestapo automotons that were prominent in the primary
narrative, and now are not but only candidates for colon cancer
like anyone else
It was an insipid disgusting culture, oppressive within and toxic outward, mean.
It’s buffering base was people lacking such a noxious mental illness themselves
but taking a boys will be boys attitude with it, boys right the way up to grandparents,
with a mix of “oh well, they’re passionate about their family, heritage, home crowd, loyal,”
and “they’re the ones that would be defending us if we were attacked,”
and “they’re all part of who we are”
but also they formed the deepest roster of violent strength
and were generally well connected with police and the local networks
of who decides what. So friendly kind hearted people were under siege all the time
and apt to be threatened.
And it could be hopelessly difficult for minorities to get jobs.
At various points jobs would be scarce in the first place.
But you’d have management viewing it as stress to have to
accomodate a minority employee unless in some highly particular way.
“The front office would all be afraid of him, Jim would have a nervous breakdown
and the secretaries would be throwing up in the toilets all day.
No, we don’t need that,” they’d chuckle, “hell no.”
Today, it’s just commonplace. It’s not some huge effort.
I don’t have to explain why I get along with anyone based on any pressure.
It’s not even a thing one does, it’s just another new coworker in the building
across countless forms of workworld. And in restaurents and bars,
and on sidewalks. We are all the infinite others in the world
There are definitely still nasty people around,
but they’re a bitter writhing rejected contingent,
brewing their deprived narcissism in fringe groups.
Renewed racism isn’t going to fix their lives
or give them back a privileged life.
Nor can you unmulticultural a culture.
Those nazi and kkk have already lost, totally.
They’ve literally in the real world lost.
They’re fucking done.
As if the military will “go back to being” all white,
as if Amazon will suddenly narrow itself, …they’ve lost,
it’s never going back to how it was.
Only these rare few even want it to,
and Trump wanted them to help win his election.
“He’s going to favour Americans”
in a way Trump is what will out them
and hopefully root out the last of it.
And then as sane people we can figure out
how to relate to the rest of the world,
collectively, all of us.
And how to solve problems and fix actual things
and stay out of wars and care for our water and oxygen better.
There’s a saying when many life forms are going extinct:
“If they’re dying we’re dying.” It’s the core of human morality.
It’s true. Humans are a kind of collectivity of all things
because of our mirror minds our uncanny 3d imitation form of learning
and the other side brain’s ability to actually store
instinctually discovered things
and align it with similar data over time
and build superstructure into living,
like Monarchs or golden triangles.
Beautiful multicoloured artworks come to life. Days on this wily planet.
My best to you all,
